You Raised My Child in Love
by Randomcat1832
Summary: Oneshot. "It was rather like she existed as an echo of something once alive." Fantine looks on from the heavens as Cosette grows up with the man she entrusted to look after her. All the while, she wishes she had a role in raising her.


**You Raised My Child in Love**

By Randomcat100

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Author's Note: This is a short little one-shot that came waltzing into my head one day. Not very long, but hopefully still enjoyable. It's also my very first one-shot for _Les Misérables_, so that's something. I don't usually like to write one-shots, I prefer to write multi-chapter stories, but once this plot bunny came along I couldn't resist writing it! I also know many of you were expecting an update from _Until the Earth is Free_ or _Dusty Old Books_ but this was already mostly finished and I'd uploaded the product to the Doc Manager in the hopes that I might be able to work on it a bit while away.  
My cover image for this story features a still of Isabelle Allen as little Cosette in the 2012 movie musical. Its title is taken from a line in Valjean's death scene.

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For my own reference: 6th fanfiction, 4th story for _Les Misérables_.

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_December 1823_

Death was different than she'd expected it to be. It was kinder, gentler, more peaceful. She went, finally, cradled in the arms of the only person who'd ever shown her kindness in the past few months, the pneumonia finally taking her in the end. She died happily and more peacefully than her life had ever been, because she died knowing her daughter would be safe. Knowing this meant her soul would have been at rest at long last. But being dead meant being able to see the living one had cared about. And Fantine finally saw the one thing she'd dreaded more than anything. She saw her daughter, her _petite_ Cosette, in misery.

There were no words to describe the hatred and anger she felt towards the Thénardiers then, for treating her child this way. And there were no words to describe the hatred and anger she felt towards herself for leaving Cosette with those innkeepers in the first place. Because from here she could see all the suffering her child had endured for nearly six full years, constant suffering that should never be endured by a girl as young as her Cosette.

She saw her daughter dressed in rags, a sorry excuse for a dress. The dress had once belonged to the youngest of the Thénardier daughters, Azelma. It had been a shade of reddish pink once upon a time, with lace at the hem and short sleeves. The girl had discarded it long ago. The dress had since been given to Cosette. Now it was too short and revealed Cosette's naked ankles. Her little girl was so skinny that the torn sleeves drooped around her bony shoulders, too large for her tiny body. Fantine saw the dirt that covered her child's small face and the bruises and welts on her body put there by the innkeepers. She watched as Cosette lugged heavy loads through the village, barefoot even in the snow. And she watched as the two people she hated more than anyone else in the world indulged their own daughters with treats and toys and fine new gowns.

Fantine now knew that for the past five and a half years, the Thénardiers had lied to her. They'd sent her many letters, demanding more money for Cosette. _Cosette has fallen ill and will require medicine. Cosette shall be needing a new shawl for the wintertime and we haven't the money to purchase one for her, for, as we are sure you understand, we are not rich people and can scarcely afford shawls and coats for our own two little daughters. Cosette shall need money for schooling when she begins in the fall, but we haven't the money with two children also of the schooling age. _Once, they'd even sent a letter asking for money so that Cosette could have a lovely doll, being six years old then and not having any toys of her very own. _She shares with our own two little girls, but you know how children can be and they squabble over the toys. _Blind and naïve, Fantine had sent the money. Now she discovered it had all been for naught.

But the man that Fantine had entrusted with all she cared about came, eventually. He arrived in the village three days after Fantine's own death, and he took her child and she knew that he would love her. She had known before, really, but when she watched as Jean Valjean – as Fantine now learned his true name was – he took Cosette in his arms and carried her away to a good life, she knew. And Fantine was happy. She was truly at rest knowing that finally, her daughter would never be unhappy again. It was this that put her soul in peace.

At first, she worried that Cosette would not be trusting of the strange man who came to take her away. Fantine worried that her daughter would be frightened, would cry, attempt to run away. But all her worrying was unnecessary, she quickly discovered.

Perhaps it was because in these years, Cosette had known nothing but misery and received either cruelty or uncaring from anyone she met. Even those who came by the inn, be they locals stopping by for a drink or passing travelers, cared not for the trembling little girl who wiped down the tables and made their beds. And out of the Hell she knew as life came someone who offered her kindness and love. She would trust anyone who would show her anything close to what The Man did.

"I shall be your Papa now," Valjean told Cosette, once he'd hailed them both in a carriage to Paris and set her on his knee. "And you will be my little girl. I can promise you, my child, that you will never suffer ever again, and that I shall keep you safe. I am here to take you to a good life. Do you understand?"

"I believe so, _monsieur_." Naturally, her Cosette was still frightened and confused. But Cosette trusted The Man anyhow, this man who said he was to be her Papa. Her daughter rested her head against Valjean's lap and slumbered deeply and peacefully for the first time in a long while.

That had been Fantine herself, once. A long time ago, a time where her life was a blessing in comparison to her days at Montreuil. She still remembered the day she had hailed a carriage to take her out of Paris, her two-year-old Cosette, still chubby from her toddler years, asleep in her arms.

"Where to, _mademoiselle_?" the carriage driver had asked.

"Anywhere out of the city should do," Fantine had replied. "Head north, east, I don't care either way. But somewhere in the countryside. Take me part way, and I shall walk the rest. Oh! And, thank you.'' Climbing into the carriage and paying the driver with some of the little money she had, she'd sat back as Cosette slept in her arms.

Why, how long ago that had been! Now everything was different, and her daughter was heading off with a man who was not her father. Thank heavens for that, of course, for if Cosette was ever to meet Felix, even if it was quite by accident ... she shuddered to think of it.

Fantine watched as her child was taken to a lovely boarding house, bathed, spoiled, and looked after. As months passed and Cosette slowly began to put on weight until she was healthy and happy, until she could laugh freely and run through the Jardin du Luxembourg like any child her age, Fantine found herself slightly envious. For here was a little girl, her little girl, who loved and trusted a man with all her heart. The man Fantine had barely known in her life was the best person in that of her daughter's. Fantine wished that she'd had a role in raising her. She'd barely even known her own child, had been utterly oblivious to the miseries that Cosette had endured. And now a stranger, really, was taking on the role she herself should have done long ago.

But her admittedly petty feelings of envy were nothing in comparison to the joy she felt to her daughter's final happiness. From above, Fantine would watch as Cosette wore the finest dresses and cradle the beautiful porcelain doll she called Catherine, watched as Cosette jumped with her skipping-rope or bounced her India-rubber ball in the garden, in the street. On Earth, it was now May, and the filthy, bony little girl lost in the woods was seemingly gone. She fit in seamlessly into the crowds of other children, children whose pasts were not plagued by inns and rags and nights spent lost and barefoot in the snow.

Despite the illusion of any happy child, however, Cosette still suffered nightmares. The shadows came to haunt her at night, fading memories come to harsh life in her young mind, a hundred time worse still than they'd been in reality. Fantine could _feel_ her child's fear, her despair, as if it was she herself plagued by a past too cruel to put to words, and wanted desperately to be the one cradling her gently when Cosette woke at night in a sweat, screaming and sobbing.

Bad dreams were common for her daughter. But sometimes, Fantine found she was able to reach out from above and calm her _petite_ Cosette, and the small girl would rest, her mind free of ghosts, if only for the moment. She was not an angel - she did not know what she was, but she certainly was neither ghost nor angel, nor was she alive. It was rather like she existed as an echo of something once alive, conscious and present but never truly there - but at times like these, she might as well have been one.

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_August 1828_

In the summer Cosette was twelve - due to celebrate her thirteenth year in November - she had all but forgotten her miserable past. Or, if she hadn't forgotten, then she blocked everything out, pretending that there had never existed a frightened child in a village called Montfermeil. But now that she was close to thirteen, she had grown into a beautiful young girl.

Cosette was still small for her age, but her dark blonde hair shone naturally and she took care to keep it well groomed, running the ivory comb she'd received from her "Papa" the last Christmas a hundred times through it each day. Her eyes no longer bulged, rather, they were a sharp blue - icy, but not cold. In those wide blue eyes there was warmth and curiosity, innocence. The trace of an everlasting childlike glee. With her round face, pure lips, and button nose, she was the epitome of childish beauty. Fantine hated to think how heavily she took after her father, physically. But unlike Felix, Cosette was a kind and sweet soul, rather like a character taken straight from the pages of the books of fairy stories she still liked to read.

On one day in the sticky July heat, Cosette found a small bird with an injured wing in the garden. Thoroughly distressed, she gathered her skirts and dashed up the stairs to the apartment she now lived in, having since left the boarding house as well as an oppressive convent. "Oh, Papa. We cannot leave it so suffer, can we? Please, we must let it reside here 'til it heals."

Valjean had agreed and Cosette hurried back down, gathering the bird in a small box and taking it gently back to her room, where she nursed it back to health until at last she set it free near the Notre Dame. It was things like these Fantine wished she had a part in. Healing an injured bird. Or the countless other things Cosette did with her "Papa", from the daily walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg to a night of hot tea and Jane Austen by the fire. Fantine had always wished to read the works of Miss Austen, as some of the more educated girls at the factory did, the talented British female writer. But her reading and writing skills were poor at best. Even the simple letters from the innkeepers she had struggled with.

Fantine knew her daughter often thought of her, of the mother she barely remembered. She often wondered who the woman who'd birthed her had been, and even - this pained Fantine more than anything else could ever do - if that mystery woman she did not even know the name of had loved her at all. "Did you know her well, Papa?" Cosette once asked during a meal.

"No ... not well, no," Valjean answered vaguely.

"Oh. And yet she - by that I mean my Maman, of course - entrusted you with me, a stranger," Cosette pondered. "Well, either way, I am glad she did so. For you are my Papa and no one else."

Valjean smiled, relieved that Cosette was not interrogating him further. "That's right, my love."

Fantine did not hate Valjean for shielding Cosette from knowledge of her own mother. She understood why he was doing it, understood his fear. And so all Cosette knew, according to her Papa, was that her mother had been a good, kind woman who died of illness thinking only of the daughter she'd left back in Montfermeil. Sometimes, the young girl doubted this, that her mother had really loved her so, but she never questioned it directly.

Because what mattered more than anything was that her daughter was still happy. With Valjean, Cosette had a life even Fantine knew she never would have been able to have given her. The dresses Cosette wore were beautiful, purchased from the finest dressmakers in the area. They were made of silk and cotton and velvet, their sleeves puffed and their collars high with lace lining, as was the fashion at the time. The fabrics were an assortment of every color from the gentlest blue to the most brilliant white. She owned many bonnets, and even a single parasol which she sometimes took with her on strolls in the park to shield herself from the hot sun. She trusted and loved no one more than her father, who loved her just as much. She loved to help him prepare meals in the kitchen with the wood oven stove, to read books with him, and even simply to laugh and talk with him before he put her to bed, that being something she did not find childish or silly in the least, despite being a full twelve years old.

But on dark nights, Fantine would still reach out to her Cosette in dreams, appearing as nothing but the hazy fog of memory. Nothing but the trace of a woman in a white nightdress, her dark brown hair flowing (for in death, her former beauty had been restored - the shorn hair long once again, the teeth that had been ripped brutally from her mouth seemingly grown back).

In the future, there would come moments when Cosette often wished she _did _have a mother. Like when her bleedings began shortly before her fourteenth birthday, and she was forced to tell her Papa that she'd been "inconvenienced by her monthly illness." Needless to say, the situation had been terribly awkward for the both of them and the words had come out with a squeak and a stutter. Why, the only reason she'd known to expect "The Curse", as it was called, was because back in Montfermeil, Éponine had once told her of them, boasting that her own would begin well before Azelma's and was demanding Cosette's agreement. How Éponine herself knew, Cosette was unaware.

Yes, it was at times like these where Fantine wished her child had a mother just as much as the young girl herself wanted one.

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_June 1832_

For a parent, it is not easy to watch their child grow up. And indeed, it pained Valjean to watch as his little girl grow from small child to rather beautiful young lady, as Cosette was now seventeen. But perhaps it is more painful when the parent has not been able to help raise that child at all. This is how it was for Fantine.

Fantine herself had been a lovely girl when _she _was seventeen, with high cheekbones, a slim figure, full lips the men all wanted to kiss, long flowing hair, and almond-shaped dark eyes. She would go to public dances and drink champagne. She'd been a vain girl and loved attention, just as she loved champagne - both were bubbly, addictive. And just two years later, she had had a child and had been fully shunned by anyone she knew, even by her beloved friend Favourite. She knew, of course, that the course would be different for her now grown Cosette, who was very unlike herself at the same age. But to think of such things, of the baby girl her younger self had cradled now all grown up. The baby girl she'd watched grow up, and yet had never been able to hold or kiss when the nightmares came along. Never been able to teach how to jump rope.

That was not the worst of it.

For then came the day that Cosette met a boy called Marius Pontmercy, and while she tried to keep it a secret from her father, Fantine knew. Her baby was now _really_ a young lady, was truly grown up. Fantine watched as her daughter sat in the garden and talked, giggled, kissed this boy, this Marius, who Fantine could tell was quite infatuated she with her daughter. And with good reason - Cosette was seemingly growing more lovely by the day. Apart from her radiant and charming personality, the loveliness Cosette had carried at the age of twelve had developed into beauty that was nearly overwhelming and over the years, her hair had begun to curl naturally, something she took from her mother. Perhaps it was just the motherliness inside Fantine speaking, but she knew that even the neighbors near the apartment they lived noted Cosette's beauty. _That Durand girl_, they all said, _she's rather stunning, is she not?_

"You are an angel," Marius once told her. "I have met an angel. But surely even the angels are not nearly as beautiful, not nearly as perfect. No, no, you are better than even an angel."

Cosette had simply stifled a giggle, fighting to keep a serious face. She did not want to reveal just how flattered she was by his comment. "Why, you do know how to charm a lady, that I see."

And then they kissed, and it blotted out the sky.

Fantine knew not what it was like to be truly loved, as this Marius did her Cosette. As a girl, she'd been convinced Felix loved her. Now she knew that not to be true, for he'd left her with child without another word, even forcing her to pay the princely sum of the bill at that café, the place where she'd last seen him. So she did not hate Marius either, even if he did mark the fact that her little girl had truly grown up.

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_February 1833_

Cosette discovered all about her mother in the letter. It had taken her a while to recover enough to read it. Marius cradled her in his arms and she sobbed, unable to leave her father's body. The tears stained the white skirt of her wedding gown, her cheeks, the stiff envelope in her hands. When she realized the ink that spelled out her name - _Cosette_, written in stark black ink against the white in Papa's familiar script - she quickly tucked it away, not wanting to damage a word he'd written. For a moment, she felt a chill, something grazing against her shoulder, and she'd turned. Through the fog of her tears, she thought she made out the smiling face of a woman. Before she could register it, the face was gone, leaving only a blurred view of the plain convent room.

She read the letter, finally, that night, by light of an oil-lamp.

There she read of secrets she almost wished she'd never wondered about. For some reason it was not the history of her Papa that bothered her, for somehow she understood why Papa had shielded such things from her. And she did not hate him for it, neither for his crime nor his hiding it from her. What upset her so was knowing about her mother, knowing that her very own mother was one of the unfortunates selling herself, like the women she sometimes saw and gave coins to out of pity.

That, she wished she'd never known.

But now, as she lay in bed with her husband, Cosette looked out the window, thinking not of him for once, but of the parents she'd lost. Her mother, and Papa. She thought of everything they had done for her, all their sacrifices and suffering. For her! And she'd been utterly oblivious. For some reason, she hated herself a little for this, even if she knew it was silly. And that night, she dreamed of the mother - Fantine, a beautiful name, she thought - she knew better through letter than memory.

But both in the heavens that were not truly heavens, and in the world of the living, more souls were put to rest. And Fantine entered her daughter's dreams freely. She held her baby daughter tightly for the first time in a while.

It would not be the last.

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**~ THE END ~  
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